Happy Simpsons Day everyone! In honor of this momentous occasion, we’re having .gifs. (As before, if there’s something else from this episode you’d like to see in a repeating compressed image file, please let me know.)

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“Dad, why are you singing?” – Lisa Simpson“Tell a lie! Tell a lie!” – Homer’s Brain“Because I have a small roll in a Broadway musical. It’s not much, but it’s a start.” – Homer Simpson“Bravo.” – Homer’s Brain

I gave up on this episode halfway through (read more and you’ll see why). The basic idea is that Lisa wants to go to band camp, but Homer loses money in a poker game to Moe’s elderly, ex-Broadway star girlfriend. (I am not making that up.) Said ex-Broadway star comes over to the house and then takes Lisa on tour, wacky hijinks ensue, etcetera etcetera, and then at some point the credits roll.

The couch gag is a kind of Star Trek doodle that probably never should’ve left the upper right corner of some bored person’s script.

We open with a West Side Story “Tonight, Tonight” song opening for poker night. Most of the lyrics are the word “tonight”.

Lisa: “to save time, I’ll start describing the favor.” There’s an extra layer of laziness and audience contempt when they pre-exposit the exposition.

Lenny just fell out a window.

Poker montage!

Now they’re doing an Inside Out thing in Homer’s head. Helpfully, it restates what’s going on (again).

And Homer loses at poker. Barney is now driving a dart board like a steering wheel. Feh.

Late at night, Bart pokes his head into Lisa’s room to re-exposit the plot. Thanks, Bart! I was confused as to whether or not Homer losing at poker would impact Lisa going to band camp.

The old Broadway lady is at dinner with the family now. They’re recounting stories. Tell, don’t show!

Here’s a typically boring and haplessly constructed series of events:

Homer tries to flatter the old lady by saying “tell me you’re writing a book”. Then . . .

Bart starts choking himself with his necktie, which causes the camera to pan away from her and over to him. Then . . .

Homer grabs Bart and says, “sit down, boy, we’re trying to show this dame that we’re deserving of her pity”. That neatly restates the thing we’d just had explained to us twice. He continues:

He pretends to hobble around on the crutch when the old lady, who’s been sitting there the whole time, is put back into frame. Homer then restates the plot once again. Pre-explained jokes, repeated exposition, no sense of object (or character) permanence; Lordy, this show is bad.

Lisa is now playing saxophone for the old lady, then pulls out “Laney’s” albums and reads the covers to us while she shows them. This form of storytelling, reading out loud while showing us the accompanying picture, is usually reserved for librarians reading to kindergartners. It is also sadly typical of Zombie Simpsons.

Marge is arguing with the old lady, then Grampa chimed in before saying, “I’ve been here, I’ve just been quiet”. Things like this are why I’m convinced the writing staff knows how shitty these scripts are and is long (LONG) past the point of caring.

You know what? Fuck it. Let’s skip forward three minutes and see what’s happening . . . the screen is panning over a bunch of empty theater seats and balconies before Milhouse appears from nowhere to tell us he got a ticket and then Lisa describes what we just saw.

Let’s skip ahead another three minutes . . . the old lady is singing (Lisa’s part of the band). Moe, in the audience, then tells us what we just saw, “Cheering for someone getting a word right. That is a low bar.” Indeed. Three more minutes, please . . .

Moe and the old lady finish the episode in a “visiting New York City” montage. But there’s one of those post-credit sketches where Homer is arguing with an Amish guy who’s related to Flanders. I watched 51% of this carcass, that should be enough.

So, the ratings for the last two episodes are in and very little has changed. The one from two weeks ago, “Friend With Benefit”, did not have the benefit of an NFL lead-in and was endured by only 3.5 million viewers. (Fun fact: the headline of that article includes the words “family”, “guy”, “series”, and “low”.) This one did have an NFL lead-in and managed 5.64 million viewers, almost exactly a million less than the previous episode that had football protecting it from apathy. Overall, ratings: still atrocious.

The annual Halloween episode has come and gone, and this year’s was just as bland and forgettable as last year’s, and the year before that, etcetera. Perhaps next year’s will break the cycle of boredom, but I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.

– Before we get started, let’s just pause for a moment to note that this is the twenty-sixth(!) edition of this. Jebus.

– Another weird opening, this time a bad “Grinch Stole Christmas” take off. Took the better part of two minutes, though, so at least there’s that.

– Segment one opens with Bart spinning Wendell on a merry-go-round so the kids can gamble on when he’ll puke. Wendell both barfs and doesn’t, so Bart somehow keeps the money and no one cares. This is off to an incoherent start.

– Sideshow Bob shows up to tell us what we just saw and explain a joke about the wallpaper on Milhouse’s phone.

– Bob’s dancing around with Bart’s intestines on his shoulders. Kinda weird.

– Bob is now drinking Bart’s blood with some wine. You know how you can tell these segments are slapdash? We’re two minutes in and barely anything has happened except Bart and/or Bob explaining what we’re seeing at that moment. For a brief comparison, by the two minute mark of “The Shining”, the family has arrived at the house, Bart’s met Willie and had his power explained, and Burns and Smithers are cutting off the cable TV and beer supply.

– After nothing happened for another minute, Bob is now using Bart’s corpse for putting practice.

– Bob stepped on a rake. Good work, guys.

– Bob is expositing again. Seems he misses Bart.

– Now we’ve got a montage of Bob killing Bart and reanimating him. This is gonna go on for a while.

– Homer just exposited what the “Reanimate” lever does after we saw a montage of it working.

– Anyway, that ended. On to segment two, “Homerzilla”! (There’s a fresh idea.)

– You know that joke where dubbed Japanese dialogue is deliberately offset from the character’s mouths (they did it at the juicer factory in Season 4)? They just did that joke, but had Comic Book Guy pre-explain it by saying, “Yes, let us show disrespect with poorly dubbed laughter.” Woof.

– Two minute mark. Still expositing the setup.

– Homerzilla is attacking now. It’s just a series of disconnected and not terribly clever sight gags. Ooh, Homerzilla has the fighter planes on yo-yo strings!

– And now we’ve swerved into a movie parody where Hollywood executives remake Homerzilla as a big, American extravaganza. Still mostly just Homer doing weak sight gags like plugging Buzz cola.

– And it ends on them narrating text we can read.

– Segment three just started with Lisa, off screen, expositing at Bart and Milhouse. Milhouse then fell down a hole, but told us about it so we wouldn’t get confused. Then Lisa and Bart talked about getting in the hole, then they got in the hole.

– Apparently we’re doing a Chronicle thing here, so the annoyances of found footage movies can come to the small, animated screen. Lisa and Milhouse have powers, Bart doesn’t and . . .

– Montage!

– Now Lisa lets us know that, “Milhouse has gone mad with power”. K.

– Now Maggie has superpowers and the episode finally gets around to ending with another montage.

– And we end on another admission that the show sucks, with Kang and Kodos yelling that it isn’t Season 4 anymore.

Anyway, since I’ve been blissfully slacking on this, let’s take a look at the numbers for the last three episodes. Two weeks ago, “Puffless” pulled just 3.29 million viewers, which places it at #10 on the all time least viewed list. A week ago, “Halloween of Horror” was watched by 3.63 million viewers. That makes it #16.

Of course, neither of those episodes had a football lead-in the way last night’s did. “Treehouse of Horror XXVI” was seen by an appropriately spooky 6.66 million viewers, which counts as a good number for Zombie Simpsons these days. That’s about a million people less than last year’s Halloween show, a dropoff that’s been pretty consistent this year.

Very short Reading Digest this week as pretty much everything tagged “Simpsons” on the internet was linked to FOX’s big marketing push for the new season, which is now a terrifyingly close nine days away. I did pluck one link from the publicity spew, but it’s just Jean saying things you’ve seen him say before. Other than that we do have some excellent fan art, Korean rock stars getting in on the fashionable clothing thing, world record tattoos, and a well thought out top 25 list.

I will certainly be on there again tomorrow as even now I am feeling guilty about episodes currently not on the list and doubting whether I have got this right. There could definitely be some last minute changes.

My Top 25 Simpsons Episodes – And the results. “Lemon of Troy” is an unusual but very worthy #1, and “Lisa’s First Word” at #2 is pretty good as well.

He goes and starts working for her, doing all sorts of terrible manual labor while Mrs. Glick watches soap operas, and just generally acts like every super old lady I’ve ever met in my life. Mrs. Glick was hilarious. To the old candy and the creepy décor, everything about her was perfect. I also laughed my ass off when she was watching the soap opera and said “Filthy…but genuinely arousing.”

Season finale! Already through 2 seasons, and man do I have to say that I’m loving this show again. I’d really forgotten how great it was, and just focused on how bad it got. And now I’m remembering why I was obsessed with this show growing up. It’s so hilarious, and manages to mix in just the perfect amount of humor that really makes for a perfect series. Although I have to admit, as much as I’m loving these classic episodes, I’m starting to dread when I get to the seasons that made me quit. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly where I fell off, and I’m not quite positive, but man this blog may change when I get there. Instead of a lovefest for an amazing show, it may become the bitter ramblings of a crazy person, before I fall into self-imposed Stockholm Syndrome.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“Ever since I became a movie star I’ve been miserable. I had to get up at 5am just for makeup. I like the way the blush brings out my cheekbones, but it’s not worth it.” – Milhouse van Houten

There’s a simple and very creative Lego Milhouse picture this week that headlines a collection of cool fan art in the mediums of Lego, ink, cross-stitch and more. We’ve also got a bunch of lists, more Season 2, Burns memories, a couple of pieces of great usage, and more.

Enjoy.

May-August developments in new works… – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the week is this collection of freaky Simpsons collages. Stop the Planet of the Apes on top of young Master Burns’ eyes is particularly good.

Like most people, I started watching over the shoulder of my parents, then when I was old enough, I would watch them on my own. I remember the first time I saw the show because it was also the first time I heard ‘ass’ being said on TV. Obviously hearing that at such a young age is what set me off into being a death metal musician!

-“Marge, I can’t wear a pink shirt to work. Everybody wears white shirts! I’m not popular enough to be different.” And then, of course, Mr. Burns commenting on the pink garb: “Well, judging by his outlandish attire, he’s some sort of free-thinking anarchist!”

Stacey Ritzen
Like many people who grew up with The Simpsons, I used to be an enormous fan, until the gradual decline in quality a decade or so ago began to disenchant and eventually disinterest me in the series. But when Playmates Toys released their World of Springfield action figure line in 1999, I was still very much obsessed with The Simpsons, and obsessively collected the toys. I’d even cut out the UPC codes to get the limited edition ones you had to mail away for, and buy ones I couldn’t find on eBay.

While she’s home, Marge shows Lisa the Bouvier family quilt, and informs her that she’s going to learn how to stitch so she can contribute a square herself. Marge is a sewing master, which is she demonstrates by lighting flame under her calloused skin.

I absolutely love the interaction Burns and Smithers have when Burns realizes his good fortune of having an artist dropped into his lap: “Somebody up there likes me Smithers.” “Somebody down here likes you too sir.” “Shut up!” Oh Mr. Burns, you’re the worst.

From time to time I’ll find someone complaining about how Lisa episodes are boring, and my only response is that you’re right, but only because you’re watching Zombie Simpsons and all the episodes are boring. Lisa episode in the actual Simpsons are fantastic.

I realized I wasn’t a freak or alone in my skepticism of Christianity when I saw an episode of the Simpsons called “Lisa the Skeptic” in which she digs up a skeleton that looks like an angel that sets the town into a religious fervor and Lisa questions the existence of god. Hearing Lisa question it made me feel more confident to question it myself and that episode has stuck with me for years.

There really is a “Homer Simpson” effect in neuroscience. The phenomenon was given this name in honor of the Fox network character, Homer Simpson. Homer once told Marge, “Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain.”

Ford said she had tried to develop a thick skin, with a dash of humour. “What I’ve found has worked has absolutely not been stoicism or silence or just getting on with things, but has been a combination of exposure and also laughing at them,” she explained. “It comes back to that Margaret Atwood quote: ‘Men are afraid women will laugh at them, and women are afraid men will kill them’.”
When she gets abusive emails, she sometimes responds with a picture of Poochie from The Simpsons. “I love the idea of them getting indignant about the fact I didn’t read their email properly,” she laughed.

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